The present invention relates to a technology which allows many people to take education over the Internet or the like and which is very convenient form the participants point of view.
In recent years, with the spread of the Internet, there exist many online education sites for allowing a participant to select a desired course from among a plurality of courses opened online and then to take the course. However, at the conventional online education sites, course provider sides predetermine course schedules on curricula. Participants are, therefore, disadvantageously forced to arrange time to the course schedule and restricted by time. For these reasons, means and methods for effectively solving these disadvantages with a view of further spreading online education have been conventionally desired.
As an education method, there exists an online education system wherein an online education site is established through the Internet and participants take courses through this online education site. The online education system of this type generally consists of an online education server connected to the Internet and providing the above-stated online education site to participants, and of a plurality of clients installed at a plurality of participants, respectively, and accessing the online education site.
In addition, at the online education site, a plurality of types of courses are prepared to allow participants to take desired courses. As for these courses, a course starting day, a course ending day, a course period and a curriculum schedule are preset and fixed by a course provider side. Accordingly, a participant applies for a course by providing information such as course starting day, course ending day, course period and schedule are suitable for the participant, using a course guidebook or the like.
When such application is made, the participant is given an ID and a password and receives learning material, if necessary. The participant accesses the online education site from the participant""s client according to the fixed schedule, waits for the authentication of his or her ID and password and then takes the course.
Meanwhile, as already stated above, according to the conventional online education system, the course provider sets fixed course starting day, course ending day, course period and curriculum schedule. Due to this, participants need to arrange time to the schedule and a degree of freedom for application is disadvantageously low. Accordingly, if the course opening day for a desired course already passed when a participant applies for the course, the participant conventionally needs to wait for a day when the next course opens, which makes against participants"" advantages.
Further, according to the conventional online education system, despite the fact that participants differ in skill, a course period is fixedly set. Due to this, the conventional system has disadvantage in that a course period is too long for a participant having much skill and too short for a participant having little skill. It is, therefore, difficult for all participants to expect education exceeding a certain level.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a technology with which the participants can select a course schedule with higher degree of freedom and thus improve the educational effect.
In the method and device of the present invention, the course starting day desired by the participant is set as the actual course starting day and schedule information corresponding to a desired course period is created. As a result, degree of freedom in a schedule for the participant can be made higher. In addition, the present invention can set the length of the desired course period according to participant""s skill. Therefore, it is possible for the participant to acquire education without causing any strain and to enhance educational effect.
Other objects and features of this invention will become apparent from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.